Interview with Mionee: Soloing Raid Bosses

Mionee of soloing fame has been at it again with recent solo kills of Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold bosses. We think it's cool when people find their unique way to have fun in Wow that's off the beaten path, so in addition to highlighting recent solo kills, we also asked her a few questions about her hobby!\r\rFind Mionee on YouTube and Patreon.\r\r\r\r\r\rWhat was the first fight you soloed - I remember wayyy back in the day lots of news about you in Wrath Naxxramas killing bosses.\r \rCan\u2019t really pinpoint a fight in particular, but the first time it became really serious was doing Karazhan on my DK during the first week after the release of WotLK, while still wearing blues on nearly every slot. Moroes, Shade of Aran, and Prince were all difficult to outheal in their own right at that point in time, with Aran needing frost resist gear (you know, the stuff supposed to be used on Sapphiron that you never used), and Prince needing to redirect Shadow Word Pain on pets by summoning them at the correct times. It was still very rough and basic, but that\u2019s when I went from just doing my own stuff in my little corner to actually dedicating myself to it, documenting it on a blog etc (which eventually became a youtube channel).\r\r\r \rWhat drew you to soloing hard fights?\r \rI\u2019m the kind of person that like pushing a challenge, and honestly it\u2019s just fun to not rely on anyone. You could ask friends or guildies to come help\u2026 but why? There\u2019s something satisfying in knowing that you can actually beat X or Y all alone.\r\rIf you die while soloing something, it\u2019s your fault, for better or worse. Feels bad when you mess up over and over and can\u2019t beat something. Feels good when you get it right. WoW bosses have little RNG in them. The most RNG you\u2019ll encounter most of the time is just your own crit luck, so you can\u2019t really blame anything but yourself.\r\rIn a real raid setting, even if you do mess up sometimes, it\u2019s not always your fault (rarely, hopefully!), so even if you wipe for an entire night on a progress boss, at worst you\u2019ll just think \u201ci wish someone would stop dying in p1 every other attempt\u201d. If you spend an entire night wiping trying to solo something, well\u2026 you\u2019re going to blame yourself for 4 hours, for not interrupting, for positioning wrong, for not doing enough dps, for using CDs wrong, for getting distracted, for being greedy and dying as a result, for \u2026 anything that goes wrong really.\r\rAnd as masochistic as it sounds that\u2019s precisely what drives me towards soloing things. Blaming others is lame, having noone to blame but myself and getting to play better is cool.\r \rWhat's the hardest in terms of mechanics and which boss took the most time to learn?\r \rThe boss that took me the most effort was Flex Garrosh at the end of MoP, in the last week before the WoD release. I think I killed it the day right before the Blizzcon that happened at the same time. That fight was extremely long and could go wrong at any turn (25 minutes, killed it in 24min 53s iirc), had a difficult dps check (p1 in particular, but the fight in general was barely on the limit of what was doable DPS-wise). \r\rGarrosh also let me express my creativity in terms of strategy. In order to beat the little sha adds, I had to leave a Farseer from p1 alive, Dark Simulacrum its Chain Lightning cast, and use it on the adds, repeating that around 15 times while dealing with all the other stuff happening at the same time. It also had a lot of execution requirements, such as reacting to Xuen procs that could mess up attempts by killing adds in an unwanted way, positioning axes correctly to not run out of space, resetting the dot while squeezing as much dps as possible, CD management because it was a pain to outheal the high stacks of the dot before each whirlwind, and of course the Dark Simulacrum thing mentioned above. It was a great fight.\r\r\r \rWhat's next on your "To Solo" list?\r \rThat\u2019s classified! (No but really I don\u2019t really know, Il\u2019gynoth?)\r \rHow has the legendary system\/artifact weapon changed soloing?\r \rI didn\u2019t feel like it changed soloing much one way or another. I play a class that doesn\u2019t have any particularly good legendary so that probably affects my opinion of the system.\r \rThe one thing that changed soloing the most was the introduction of an absurd power creep between extensions, back in WoD. There is also an absurd power creep *within* extensions, which started in MoP. These changes, along with the streamlining of class toolkits, affect soloing a lot more than anything else really.\r \rAs an example, it took until MoP for the best soloing classes to solo Lich King 25H or Yogg-Saron 25 with no keepers, the prime bosses from WotLK aka 2 expansions earlier. It took full MoP raid gear to barely solo Madness of Deathwing in 10 Normal after a lot of attempts. Nowadays, we are in the first tier of Legion, and most WoD bosses can be soloed on Mythic difficulty somewhat easily by most tanks.. let alone 10 Normal. Even Mages are already soloing Mythic Archimonde. Of all classes.. Mages\u2026 needless to say, the power creep between expansions is absurd now, which shrinks the amount of interesting targets to solo by a large margin.\r\r\r \rHow do you think DKs and DH's compare when it comes to Soloing? You've been doing more on your DH - are they better than DKs? \r \rI\u2019d rather skip this question, because idk anything about DKs anymore lol\r\rI know you love a challenge - do you think of ways to make solo fights even MORE difficult? Like limiting ilvl or disallowing certain pieces of gear?\r \rThis is actually something I tried to push when it came to the soloing community a few years ago, but noone else was really interested so I gave up. I wanted to do speedruns of certain instances, and to take note of the lowest ilvl recorded to solo certain bosses. The soloing scene is super small though so it never took off and I lost motivation. \r\rDo you play other hard solo games like Dark Souls? Or does the challenge of doing it in an MMO make it even better?\r \rI\u2019ve never played Dark Souls, but I always play my games on the hardest difficulty available, yeah. I like to play Touhou (a somewhat well-known Japanese shmup series), and, well, most players who start that game begin by playing normal mode and going up from there, but I started straight up in Lunatic difficulty when I began. *shrug*\r \rThe fun of doing it in a MMO is that those things are usually not intended to be done solo. A single-player game, no matter what, will always be intended to be done by a single player one way or another. MMO mechanics, not so much. Sometimes there\u2019s nothing particular you need to do (or *can* do), but sometimes you can figure out weird ways to deal with things. A MMO is also much more prone to weird things happening, with so many spells and interactions between npcs, abilities, etc.

Комментарии

Комментарий от leowow

on 2017-05-30T19:31:56-05:00

It is nice to solo bosses. But i dont like it was only limited to certain classes and specs who could or do this. First was hunter, then tank dks, then brewmasters, now tank demon hunters.\r\rAlways limited to only few classes and specs capable to solo bosses. And the others?. They simply cant or couldnt in the time when some bosses were current.

Комментарий от soneil

on 2017-05-31T01:12:11-05:00

I like doing group content solo. Especially these days when my guild has shrunk down to only a few regular players. Not enough to actually do progression raiding anymore so I do a lot of not-quite-current content solo.\r\rHaving said that, I found it a lot more satisfying before WOD when they stripped away so many abilities from each class. Maybe some people like it now but I perferred it when classes had a wide range of abilities to draw upon in different situations. Combat just seems far more boring now. On some classes like my prot warrior it's still interesting enough to play with a variety of abilities. Others like my hunter seem ridiculously boring. A class that used to have a huge range of abilities reduced to using the same small selection over and over for a whole fight.

Комментарий от Grabovsky

on 2017-05-31T02:09:16-05:00

Soloing has always been my favorite part of WoW, ive been doing it since vanilla. Being in a group is great, and finally downing a boss are weeks\/months of work as a team is just amazing, but soloing pushes your abilities to the test. It makes you think differently.

Комментарий от Brissingar

on 2017-05-31T02:41:33-05:00

When your class challenge isn't challenging enough....

Комментарий от CarrySlayer

on 2017-05-31T03:02:24-05:00

Hello, Blizzard, Something's Not Quite Right!\ufeff

Комментарий от Krougher

on 2017-05-31T03:15:53-05:00

I dont play or like DH and i am fine with this class soloing content, it was always impressive and resulting about alot of tryes and fails, dont ask to nerf or balance, up a DH (starting lvl 100 ... should not be hard), and try to do the same, you'll see if it easy.\r\rRespect her work and dedication.

Комментарий от GeckoKid

on 2017-05-31T04:48:48-05:00

Always loved her solo videos, now that she mentioned one could solo mythic Archimonde I really would like to give it a go, any idea if a BM hunter could solo the whole instance?

Комментарий от STARSET

on 2017-05-31T05:04:55-05:00

nice balance

Комментарий от Kluk

on 2017-05-31T05:25:24-05:00

Bosses of the current extension shouldn't be soloable. That's it :)\rIf not, there is a huge problem. And Blizzard must solve it.

Комментарий от Phlynch

on 2017-05-31T06:17:49-05:00

It is nice to solo bosses. But i dont like it was only limited to certain classes and specs who could or do this. First was hunter, then tank dks, then brewmasters, now tank demon hunters.\r\rAlways limited to only few classes and specs capable to solo bosses. And the others?. They simply cant or couldnt in the time when some bosses were current.\rThe content is designed around being done by 10-30 people, being able to solo it at all is a massive feat.

Комментарий от RaynesZen

on 2017-05-31T06:22:14-05:00

Isn't he a guy? You might wanna correct that "her hobby". Not that i wanna assume his gender but i have heard him speak.

Комментарий от RaynesZen

on 2017-05-31T06:26:39-05:00

It has been proven before that certain bosses could be done by more classes after Mione soloed them. He was always able to find the trick to achieve the kill. I remember, back in mop or cata, mione was soloing stuff as dk and everyone was complaining about dks being strong and then you would see guardian druids or prot paladins achieve about the same things after they would notice the trick.

Комментарий от Alfa

on 2017-05-31T06:28:30-05:00

Isn't he a guy? You might wanna correct that "her hobby". Not that i wanna assume his gender but i have heard him speak.\r\rSo, you'll judge their gender by how they sound? Interesting lol\r\r\rHighly unlikely they would mess that up, considering they used her and she.

Комментарий от RaukoLord

on 2017-05-31T07:54:12-05:00

It is nice to solo bosses. But i dont like it was only limited to certain classes and specs who could or do this. First was hunter, then tank dks, then brewmasters, now tank demon hunters.\r\rAlways limited to only few classes and specs capable to solo bosses. And the others?. They simply cant or couldnt in the time when some bosses were current.\r\ryou forgot about retro pally

Комментарий от Araitik

on 2017-05-31T08:40:45-05:00

Even Mages are already soloing Mythic Archimonde. Of all classes.. Mages\u2026 \r\rHahaha that would be me :D\r\rMione, great as always :)

Комментарий от Saruya

on 2017-05-31T09:14:06-05:00

Isn't he a guy? You might wanna correct that "her hobby". Not that i wanna assume his gender but i have heard him speak.\r\rTransitioning I think would be the correct term here. Born male, becoming female.\r\rRegardless, she's got incredible skill and I've been a fan for years.

Комментарий от anthonyvdv

on 2017-05-31T09:33:37-05:00

I am very impressed. Congratz\u00a0on achieving these kinds of fights and SOLO. Incredible. Also your Mione char looks good. I don't know how you do it but you can. Will have to create a demon hunter and try it out I guess. Thank you for making this video and doing the work and to share with us all. Goodluck with your next solo project :-)

Комментарий от Khalii

on 2017-05-31T11:07:58-05:00

Dude! I remember watching her videos when I was a teenager back in 2011, wondering how the hell did she do it and wanting to do it myself xD\rHer videos really inspired me to solo content, now it's one of my favorites things to do in the game.

Комментарий от schnizol

on 2017-05-31T15:05:53-05:00

Maybe it's an unpopular opinion but I think soloing bosses from the recent expansion is already a dumb design. But soloing heroic bosses from current tier is absolutely idiotic. This is wrong design. This shouldn't be possible at all. Shame on devs, really.

Комментарий от Morvangor

on 2017-05-31T15:53:38-05:00

Could not agree more schnizol. And then its often limited to this or that class with this or that trinket. Exploiting design flaws as favorite part of the game. Yay! ;)